Amped 3

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It's got a great sense of humor and tons of options, but is it any fun?

By Charles Onyett

The Amped series has always managed to differentiate itself from the rest of the snowboarding games out there by simply being very difficult. For instance, Amped 2 was a hard game, but with good reason. It forced players to be patient and learn precisely how to perform jumps, tricks, and grinds in order to be successful. As a result, Amped earned the reputation as a series that took snowboarding in an extremely realistic direction, which is something that absolutely cannot be said about the arcade-like SSX games. In Amped 2, a system was in place that worked very well, giving players a challenging yet satisfying experience. With Amped 3 for the Xbox 360, all of that has changed, and not entirely for the better.

Amped 3 puts you in the boots of your own created character. The character creation feature is actually impressive, giving you a wide range of ways to make crazy looking boarders. In addition, you'll be able to cover them in all sorts of brand name gloves, shirts, coats, and shoes, among many other costumes and silly gadgets. Basically, you're able to look like whatever kind of snowboarder you want, though none of the girth or skinniness adjustments affect your boarding skills.

The way you learn acquire new skills in Amped 3 is a gradual process, and not one you're necessarily going to notice as you improve. Completing the various challenges littered around each of the game's seven mountains will earn you new tricks and improve your abilities a piece at a time. For instance, if you just busted out a gold medal on a challenge where you had to follow a certain path while picking up special icons, you might earn better balance during your butter moves.

All of this aside, the big issue with Amped 3 as we've seen it come along in the development process has been just how different it is from previous games in the series. After spending a good deal of time with it, we can definitely say it doesn't really feel like any previous Amped games. As soon as you start up the game you'll be able to pull off reverse corkscrews, indy grabs, and double front flips no problem. Also, since there's no need to press a button to attach to a rail anymore, you can chain together huge strings of moves while intermixing butter tricks to amass huge point totals.

Sounds a lot like SSX, right? Well, it's not really, but it's definitely a step away from Amped's roots and towards the arcade style of the uber-tricking, multiplier-snagging SSX. However, just saying it's different isn't necessarily a criticism, since it could still be different and fun to play. Unfortunately, this isn't the case. Though Amped 3 has a ridiculous amount of frills and extras, its core gamplay suffers from awkward controls and grows tiresome. It's almost like Amped 3's gameplay was changed to try and make it more accesscible, but along the way it settled into a weird zone of limbo between engaging and mediocre.

In Amped 3 you'll still be able to get style bonuses for slowly rotating your character around, but it's way easier than in previous titles. This really drains a lot from the gameplay since part of the fun of previous titles was the challenge. In terms of controls, Amped doesn't let you go exactly where you want. It's not just in the sense that you're on a snowboard and have an awkward mobility, but there are strange issues with turning. For instance, if you're trying to make a wide turn to the right or left, you'll find it to be difficult to turn back down the hill. You'll get turned around more often than you'd expect, and you're somehow able to snowboard up a mountain if you're moving with some speed.